Andrew Cuomo’s cameo in bridge mess

They’re two giant-personality, neighbor-state governors who might both end up crowding onto the national political stage, but few people have paid much attention to what goes on between Chris Christie and Andrew Cuomo.

Christie’s traffic back-up scandal has changed that, putting a spotlight on what’s been a generally good working relationship between the Republican governor of New Jersey and the Democratic governor of New York. Though the governor’s office in Albany denies there’s anything to it, political chatter in New York has focused on what Cuomo knew about the scandal coming to light, and when.

Text Size

Who's who in the Christie bridge scandal

Grading media's Christie coverage

For weeks, Cuomo refrained from saying much publicly. But on Saturday, following a speech at the National Action Network, reporters pressed him for answers, and he gave a few short answers that nonetheless were his most extensive public comments on the issue to date.

At the heart of the questions: the whistleblower who led to the exposure of Christie’s aides, first in a private email that went so far as making an accusation of possible illegal activity and then in public testimony that contradicted claims of a “traffic study,” is Port Authority executive director Pat Foye, a Cuomo appointee who is close with several top Cuomo aides.

The lane closures were “done on the Jersey side,” Cuomo said, drawing a clear separation between “Jersey officials” and Foye, whom he described as “clearly shocked” and “not happy” when he discovered what happened.

Asked what his own response was to Foye’s original email, Cuomo deferred.

“Well, where we are now … everybody wants the same thing,” Cuomo said, “facts.”

He skipped a chance to criticize Christie, saying only, “I think Governor Christie made it clear that he is very displeased with what happened.”

In the emails and messages released, Christie’s aides mocked the trouble they caused — and attacked Foye for the motives behind his response to the lane closures. Christie’s aides and appointee look petty, vindictive, and potentially criminal. Without any spin, Cuomo’s appointee comes off as the man who overrode the lane closures, looked into what went wrong and testified truthfully about what he in his email called an “abusive decision which violates everything this agency stands for.”

Though few will say so publicly for fear of angering Cuomo, in interviews, close to a dozen people in and around New York politics registered their doubts that Foye would have sent such a harsh and extensive email, leaked early on, and continued to have had such an active role, without more contact with the governor’s office. In their minds, Cuomo is too much of a top-down operator, and Foye too cautious for them to believe it.

Cuomo and his circle tend to bristle at what they say is a caricature of him as a micromanaging obsessive constantly working all the political angles, but that’s done little to chase it from people’s minds.

Amid both a political scandal that’s national news and a U.S. attorney’s investigation which is still taking shape, Cuomo and his aides have avoided saying much publicly before the governor’s own comments Saturday. The governor’s office says Foye told Cuomo’s office about the email only after it was sent — he forwarded the email to a top Cuomo aide several hours later — informing them that something strange had happened that he was trying to get to the bottom of, but did not point the finger at Christie or his appointees. Other emails released show Cuomo aides asking what was going on, and asking in response to Foye’s request to talk, “Wasn’t this in New Jersey?”

Foye “couldn’t have written that harsh a note without telling at least Howard Glaser or Larry Schwartz,” said longtime New York Democratic consultant George Arzt, naming two members of Cuomo’s inner circle. “But I think he told the governor what he was doing. Being a person who’s so cautious, there’s no way that Foye would not have told the governor.”

Arzt said Foye later called him to say his only concern had been clearing the traffic, and he hadn't informed the governor's office.

“All I can say is it wouldn’t have happened in Andrew Cuomo’s administration that he didn’t know what his people were doing,” said Jay Jacobs, a former Democratic state chairman whom Cuomo eventually replaced on the job. “And his team runs a tight ship, and it’s a real tight ship—nobody would have gotten away with that in the Cuomo world.”